Well-Being

The Emerging Popularity of “Well-Being”

With respect to consumption, however, the concept of well-being has been instrumentalized early on in industrialized societies. It has been used implicitly and explicitly to market almost anything: from cars to washing machines, chocolate, face creams, fitness appliances, and kitchens—as can be witnessed, for example, in 1950s' advertisements portraying sashaying housewives celebrating the liberation [Page 1526]brought about by the automated modern kitchen. The emphasis here is not on holism, even if it is sometimes suggested that a synergy of consumer goods will produce even more well-being. Rather, in this context, consumer goods represent a trigger supposed to catapult users into a state of material bliss.

It is only comparatively recently that well-being has become commodified as such through its paradoxical relocation in the subjectivity of the body. A messy convergence of sociohistorical developments and eclectic intellectual contributions has enabled this shift: from the phenomenological insights of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to the emergence of psychophysiology or the cognitive neurosciences; from increasingly hegemonic globalization and technologization trends to the parallel rise of individualization, uncertainty, and risk (as analyzed by, e.g., Anthony Giddens or Ulrich Beck); from Foucauldian technologies of the self to the increasing popularity of Eastern health practices; from the loss of traditional religiosity to the appropriation of more embodied forms of spirituality; from the marketing of things to the marketing of senses and feelings. The demise of many traditional certainties paired with ever accelerating environmental changes has led many individuals in Western(ized) societies to seek an ontological refuge in the body's well-being, transforming an instrumental relationship to corporeality into a “body project.” The most visible offshoots of this reanchoring of well-being in bodily subjectivity are the fitness and wellness ideologies, together with the lifestyle health commodities that they have spawned.

First fitness then wellness were popularized in the aftermath of World War II—initially in the United States—as strategies to combat sedentary ills, to emphasize the benefits of preventive versus curative medicine, and to focus on environmental factors influencing health as well as to shift responsibility from the institution (be it the state, the hospital or the company) to the individual. While fitness has tended to emphasize outer bodily control and performance, wellness seems to advocate a more subjectively steered and even hedonistic approach to lifestyle regulation. At this point, a geographical differentiation should be emphasized. Whereas in the United States both ideologies soon enjoyed strong policy backing on both the public and corporate health fronts—before fitness and wellness products began to invade the market, in Europe, it was the commercial aspect of these currents that sealed their popularity, and there was a distinct lag until public health institutions and human resources departments began to show interest. A number of historically shaped factors shed light on the reasons for these contrasting trajectories. For instance, in Europe, strongly socialized health care systems—providing basic physiological monitoring while leaving little scope for individualized options or initiative—have only recently been threatened with partial dismantlement and privatization. Moreover, the shadow cast by fascist regimes' infamous hijacking of many holistic health ideologies of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (such as the so-called Lebensreform movement or various nudist cultures) also slowed the institutional reappropriation and dissemination of many otherwise sensible tenets pertaining to healthy lifestyle management.

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